Further details
Ceci n'est pas une pipe. This jewel brings together all of the best characteristics of Congo art through the slightly curved gesture of the body, the surreal nature of the large hand clasped at the torso, the toque-like coiffure and expressive angularity in the face wrapped in a deep honey-brown and silky patina. Tobacco and smoking rituals were recorded as early as the 17th century in Congo (Vansina, A History of the Kuba Peoples, 1978, p.176). As this pipe and other related pipes with highly sophisticated iconography from this region such as the Luluwa pipe from the Malcolm Collection (Robbins and Nooter, African Art in American Collections, Survey 1989, 1989:325, #841) or the Teke pipe from the Berlin Ethnologisches Museum, no. III C 44918, the practice of smoking took on its own important subsets of art and ritual.
A Collector of today by Pierre Amrouche
Formed over a short period of ten years, since the new the millennium, this present-day collection shows us once again that a collection formed with taste and in an earnest process of continuous education, over time it takes unexpected directions and its own shape without the collectors even being aware. That element of discovery and surprise becomes inextricably linked to the spirit of the ensemble, but no one escapes the spirit of their time, so palpable, yet no one point of origin. In this area, the realm of art collecting in so-called 'Primitive' Art or l'Art Premier, simultaneous patterns over the last one hundred years have always influenced its direction. In 1914, for instance, Paul Guillaume in Paris was approached by Marius de Zayas to send a selection of African artifacts to Alfred Stieglitz in New York for his exhibition Statuary in Wood by African Savages at Gallery 291. Today, upon reflection, its necessary to recognize that 'Primitive Art' was recognized as art, as opposed to ethnography, and alongside the contemporary art of their times, even then. However, several factors determined the limitations of choices in those days amongst the first buyers in this field, not least of which depended upon available sources. Colonization by the West for the majority of countries in Africa and Oceania created the main influx of objects in this young market. Religious iconoclasm, free trade, missionary collections and out-right purchasing, provided a random selection based on the particular territories then encountered. In the 1950s, arrived a time of new discoveries to the established canon. This is when spectacular Dogon, Baga serpents and Lobi statuary, to name a few, were introduced to the world outside their original borders. By mid-twentieth century, only a few territories remained untouched, but by the late 1960's fights for independence and fierce civil wars that in turn prompted a flood of objects: the Biafran war, war in the Belgian Congo, etc.
A French art collector in the 1930s would have mostly found African objects from the French Sudan, Cameroon, and Middle Congo. This same principle applies for an English, German or Belgian collector, with concentrations from their respective territories. While Americans, in one aspect, are exempt from this principle as non-colonizers, they nevertheless were receiving the cumulative works available, and tended to be less focused in any particular region.
In our times, collectors do not suffer within the same political and geographical constraints. Who today does not subscribe to trade publicity? Who today is not connected to the internet? What hermit could hide from the global market, structured like a club, with its firmly established seasonal rituals? This sort of be "archaeo-collector" cannot exist in 2014. A simple visit online, for example, shows the huge choice of niche profiles on many varied subjects - the Eskimo fishhook, thimbles of the Uzbek. For the major ethnic groups celebrated by the market, there are a plethora of exhaustive publications in the vein of the catalog raisonn prepared for painters and sculptors, for instance. We study everything, every detail. Its variants are weighed and classified - anonymous sculptors become masters of this or that, schools are opened, workshops soon appear: the entourage ... . Institutions in unison, museums open their reserves, adopt thematic exhibitions, exhibit private collections and even organize hagiographical events to the glory of great dealers. Private museums are sometimes precursors, Dapper Foundation became Dapper Museum, and began to exhibit and showcase African objects as no French museum had done before. Jacques Kerchache imposed his aesthete eyes on behalf of l'Art Premier at the Louvre and, in part, to the Quai Branly Museum.
When the art lover of a century ago, in the heroic childhood of collecting, bought a chic object emanating from the Gold Coast or bought an object that actually came from the exotic Congo River Basin it must have felt very lonely! The collector today -'transfrontier' and 'internetoïdal' -faces another situation where either choice or instinct is the master. He is faced with choices, in a way, happily multiplied, but sometimes cleverly underwritten. What a harrowing track for those who want to build an important collection with major works of art?
The young man who created this collection beginning in 2003 when he bought a Dan mask, and resold since, starting from scratch. His father had a taste for objects, true amongst most amateurs, and one African object in particular was acquired in the 1960's from Simone de Monbrison, a good address. This object, and some Asian art, which he grew up knowing, profoundly influenced our collector in-the-making.
His itinerary began with timid purchases of items quickly deemed too soft, which he discarded without regrets in order to hone his eye, and found himself in the midst of expressive patinas, thick, crusty, decayed or oozing. The arts of Cameroon and Congo quickly occupied a key place in the young collection. The Belgian market and the French market, and auction houses, and fairs gave him a vast field in which to maneuver. He created a ritual: circumambulation of the "quartier" - rue Guénégaud, the rue des Beaux-arts via the Rue de Seine, a race to the Thalys landing in the Sablon, where a similar system took shape, as in Paris. Meanwhile, he surveyed the museums: Branly, Tervuren, Dapper and indulged his predilections and immersed himself in books. All night, entranced by his last purchase noting how they compare to the icons of the same brethren. He seeks, above all, emotion - that thunderbolt, immensely and immediately gratifying. He loves the objects and their history, pedigrees that go back in time, to Paul Guillaume, Charles Ratton, and the grand tradition of 'African Negro Art'. He also loves those who can tell those stories, and he became close to several galleries and collectors. His associates are the main cast of les arts sauvages personalities -Monbrison, Claes, Hourdé, Ratton, Entwistle, Dulon, Casanovas, de Grunne, Leloup, Felix, Meyer, Ferrandin, Bovis, Bacquart, Vanuxem and many others. He knows which objects were collected in Cameroon by Alain Dufour, the others by Guimiot and Kerchache, and the rest by Pierre Harter. Provenances he savored like a fine wine or a good Havana!
A collection develops and builds gradually those supporting pillars which sustain its power. One particularly impressive aspect of the collection is the range of power figures - one austere and rigid, another shiny from oily ointments disgorging from every pore; another triumphant in the exuberance of its metal charms proudly displaying the wealth of its owner and its power. Surrounded by many nkisi reliquaries, who protect and house spirits of the Congo River basin cloaked in magic mirrors and medicinal charges. The Kingdoms of the Kongo forest meet masks from the Kingdoms of Cameroon, Kom, Bangwa and other places practicing in hierarchical secret societies whose traitors are punished with death by the omnipresent royal power. The edicts of Congo power statuary mandates that their eyes cannot look down. In the matrix of their crusty patina, their eyes mitigate threats to the initiates. However, our connoisseur's collection is not composed solely of power objects. Precious objects from all parts of Africa and Oceania are there, too. Formally pleasing works such as the sublime fragment of a Dogon maternity whose minimal lines have been cut by time in a manner sufficient enough to restore the original grandeur; regalia of the Congo as the Luba scepter and Luba adze collected in 1900; and from Angola a tobacco mortar of anthropomorphic elegance; Northern Congo, near the Ubangi, a drum and a Mangbetu harp, from the former Vérité collection, which alchemy has given a golden patina. More serene, a Punu, southern Gabon, mask and a Fang Byeri from Woleu-ntem in the north, the collection opens to Nigeria where a large Igbo Alusi statue and vertical Wurkun mask dominate. From Sahel, besides the aforementioned beautiful fragment, exist Bamana and Dogon statuettes, demonstrating once more the taste of the collector to wide-ranging patinas and surfaces. Finally, from Oceania, a beautiful Kanak mask, apuema, and a Biwat flute stopper confirm that his search for beauty has not been limited by the cards dealt.
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